With the advancements in digital and mobile communications technologies, many people are now able to communicate anytime and anywhere. Devices such as digital cameras, personal communication devices, digital camcorders and other similar types of devices are now reasonably accessible to most people. Many of these types of devices allow the user to capture multimedia content and store that content either locally on the device or to upload the content to a computer or other storage device. The user can then access the content on demand.
Furthermore, a user with a computer typically also has access to software that can be used to alter the multimedia content. For example, images can be altered in size, brightness and color. By altering the multimedia content, the user can enhance his enjoyment of the content. In addition, most users that have computers also have access to the Internet. Internet access enables a user to share the multimedia content with other users. The multimedia content can be shared using email or by posting the content on a web site.
One disadvantage to the increased popularity of the Internet is that the types of information that are available to a user increase dramatically. As such, it becomes increasingly difficult for a user to locate desired information or multimedia content. For example, if a user is sightseeing in New York City and uses his digital camera to take pictures of the Statue of Liberty, the user may be interested in online content that relates to the Statue of Liberty (e.g., other images, audio or text data, etc.). While search engines currently exist which are able to identify web sites based on key word searches, these engines do not always identify the desired content. Furthermore, techniques exist which allow for a device, such as a digital camera, to store geographic data pertaining to the image being obtained. Such data could be used to identify other similar data (e.g., other images of the same object, landmark, etc.). This type of data is not used by existing search engines to identify related content. It would be useful to be able to index and store multimedia content in a network such that the content could be retrieved by other users interested in the same content.